


After the Ice

by Sakon76



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 12:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sakon76/pseuds/Sakon76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie went skating too early in the winter, and fell through the ice.  But that was only the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Other Side of the Ice

Everything was divided into Before The Ice, and After The Ice.

Before the ice, Jamie had been normal. Brown hair, brown eyes, okay, maybe a little odd given his interest in cryptids, myths, and the supernatural, but everyone had just written that off to a possible future as a college professor.

After the ice, streaks of white bled into his hair, his eyes focused on things that weren't really there, and the normally garrulous teenager shut up like a longneck clam.

"You're worrying them," the silver ghost said.

Jamie studiously ignored the apparition sitting on his bed. Sine, cosine, tangent. Sine, cosine, tangent...

Jack sighed gustily and flopped down onto the comforter. "Ignoring me won't make me go away, Jamie."

"You're not real," Jamie said under his breath.

Jack rolled over onto his stomach, blue eyes examining the teenager at the desk. "The guy who's spent his whole life looking for ghosts and yeti finally gets a glimpse into the supernatural world, and he's denying it." He tsk-tsk-tsked through his teeth. "Disappointing me here, Bennett."

"Go away, Jack."

"Mm, nope." Jack didn't even pretend to consider it. "You're the first person who's seen me in three hundred years. And that happens to be _my_ pond you almost drowned in, so the rules say I gotta make sure you're okay."

"There are rules?" Despite himself, Jamie looked up, interested, until he remembered that he wasn't supposed to be talking to people who weren't actually there.

"Sure there're rules. And, no, they're not more like guidelines." Jack propped himself up, one hand under his chin, the other tracing swirls on the coverlet. Silver frost followed his touch. "I got the whole winter and watery death and _especially_ that pond thing. My responsibility, y'know?"

Jamie's eyes were on his math textbook, but his pencil was still over the paper. He could be thinking. Or listening.

"So, since the ice broke under you - stupid trying to skate that early in the season, by the way - you're under my jurisdiction. Or protection. Whichever."

"Protection?" Jamie asked, almost against his will.

Blue eyes shadowed, looked down. "There are things," Jack said slowly, "that are a lot worse than drowning in winter. Dark things. And people who can see them are fair prey." The words sounded like they were being dragged unwillingly out of him. Like he had personal experience of the dark things.

"Prey." Jamie didn't like that word.

"Prey." Jack looked up again, and his smile was lopsided and curiously tight. "There are bad ways to die, Jamie. Drowning is... benign, in comparison."

Jamie remembered the dull crack of the ice, the sudden downward plunge, his skates weighing him down. The ice water had soaked through his jacket and clothes in an instant. He'd gasped in shock, thrashing, trying to fight his way to the surface. But his fingers had brushed only the underside of solid ice. The air and water in his lungs had burned cold, like frozen knives. His blood had rushed in his ears. After a few minutes of panic and pain, though, it had all drifted away, like he was resting in a nice cool cocoon.

He remembered his eyes closing.

He couldn't swear the hand reaching out for him hadn't been clothed in a blue sweatshirt. But he also couldn't swear he hadn't imagined it.

He'd woken, the better part of a week later, in the hospital. With a blue-white winter ghost perched on a wooden crook in the middle of the room, peering down curiously at Jamie.

Jack hadn't left since.

"Jamie?" His mom knocked on the doorframe and stepped into his room, carrying a small tray. "I thought you'd like a snack. How's the homework going?"

Jamie tore his gaze away from Jack Frost, and managed a weak smile for his mother. "Dismally," he told her as she set the sandwich and hot chocolate down on his desk.

"Hmm." Her fingers combed through his weird-colored hair as she leaned over his shoulder, looking at the equations. "Over my head, too, I'm afraid. Why don't you call Monty and see if he's free for a tutoring session?"

"Yeah." Jamie hadn't really talked to his friends much - or they hadn't talked to him - since the accident. He didn't know if it was because he was too weird for them now, seeing ghosts and spirits and all that, or if they just didn't know what to say to him. "Yeah, maybe I should." He'd only been falling further and further behind in math over the last two months.

"You do that." His mom straightened, and shivered a little. "You should keep the window closed," she chided, stepping over and taking care of it. "You're just letting the heat leak out, and we're not made of money, you know!" She turned and brushed at the frost patterns on his comforter. Her fingers passed right through Jack, who winced and shifted out of the way. "You'd think you'd have had enough of the cold for a lifetime, Jamie."

Jamie looked at the comforter, at Jack. At the frost patterns that apparently weren't just his imagination. Jack met his eyes levelly, one eyebrow quirked.

"Yeah," Jamie said, not knowing what to think. "I'll try to be better about that. Thanks, Mom."

"Love you, sweetie," she said, walking out the door. "Don't forget to call Monty."

Never looking away from Jamie, Jack reached out and tapped the side of Jamie's mug.

The steam rising off the drink vanished.

Jamie swallowed.

"Prey?" he asked, voice hoarse and unsteady.

"Prey," said Jack.


	2. Iceless

Sneakered feet pounded the pavement and surely the loud thuds they made were only in Jamie's ears. Or maybe that was his heart racing, the stitch in his side slicing deep and painful as he ran for his life, backpack jouncing against him, the shape and weight of the canister of sea salt the only thing reassuring in this situation.

"Hang a left!" Jack yelled.

Dodging between pedestrians, Jamie did so, turning onto Ninth. Ordinarily, the flying winter spirit would have slicked a path for him, used wind gusts to help Jamie evade the thing hunting him, but it was high summer now, and Jack, as he had put it, couldn't do jack during this season.

"I'm winter, Jamie," the blue-white ghost had told him, his hands' grip on his shepherd's staff so tight that the wood creaked. "Spring, I have some power. Autumn too. Winter, I'm pretty strong. But summer?" he shook his head. "Any pixie with a claw tied behind its back can best me. The most I can do is be an extra set of eyes."

So Jamie was running for his life from something that looked like a black cloud with too many eyes and far too many fanged mouths, and all Jack was able to do was pathfind for him.

At least, Jamie thought, at least he was Burgess' best-known freerunner, with his daily dawn and dusk parkour runs marking him as odd but not crazy, so that when he had to run and dodge like this from monsters that no one else could see... well, it was just Jamie Bennett being Jamie Bennett.

"Red light!" Jack yelled from his aerial vantage. "The alley's blocked. Go around."

Jamie couldn't spare breath to curse the way he wanted to. The loss of his shortcut was going to cost him seconds. But there was no way around it; all he could do was hope his lead was enough.

He blasted through the park, raced around Jackson Pond, ignoring the swimmers there, bounded up the slope to his home, didn't even bother looking before crossing the street, burst through the loose board in the fence and skidded to his knees in the middle of the circle burned into the turf of the lawn, tearing open his backpack and fumbling open the canister of sea salt, spreading it in a thick, even circle, leaving open just the space he'd come in through.

"Incoming!" Jack shot over the fence, heels dogged by the gaki. Knowing the plan, he dodged around the circle while the demon, eyes on the prize that was Jamie, went straight in.

Jamie ducked and rolled out of the circle, yelling in shock as the shadow-cloud brushed icy pain through his shoulder. Twisting, he let salt fly free, closing the circle.

The demon screamed, deafening, its claws slicing at the air, inches from taking off Jamie's nose.

But the circle held. That was the important thing. The sea salt circle held.

Breathing deeply, pushing down adrenaline and exhaustion, Jamie forced himself to his feet. Unclenched his fist, revealing the book of matches. Face grim, he pulled one out. Struck it. Tossed it into the circle.

The gaki's train-whistle shriek matched the sky-high plume of white flame that erupted.

Jamie waited until the flames, and the demon, were gone before he let himself fall to his knees, panting, holding his shoulder.

Jack dropped from the sky, landing silently beside Jamie. His hand covered Jamie's; Jamie let his hand come away from the spirit-injury. The cold of Jack's touch seeped into the wound, numbing it. "That was too damn close," Jack said, even as the pixies and brownies and other tiny folk who lived in Jamie's garden crept back into sight.

"Yeah," Jamie agreed. "Too damn close."

He favored the shoulder, and the arm, all evening. When his mother asked, Jamie lied and said he'd wrenched it on a bad landing during his afternoon run. She pursed her mouth but kept any comments to herself. His sister Sophie just looked at him silently. Jamie didn't know what she thought. Sometimes he thought maybe she could see into the same world he did, but he never asked. If she could, she would be prey for the same things he was, and Jamie didn't want that.

After dinner, he made sure their greyhound was in for the night, and locked the doors. He left a dish of cream, another of honey, and a small loaf of whole wheat bread on the back step. They would be gone by morning, taken by the small folk who lived in his garden and kept his home safe. A small price to pay, and much easier than warding every door and window with salt each night. Then Jamie turned off the lights, and went upstairs to bed.

Jack was waiting in his room, sitting on the low step before Jamie's window. "Let me see," he said as Jamie turned off the bedroom light.

Quiet, worn down, Jamie pulled off his long-sleeved shirt, revealing his shoulder.

The dark mark spread like wine across his shoulder where the gaki's essence had raked through him.

Jack stood behind Jamie and placed an icy hand on the wound. He took a breath, in and out, and Jamie relaxed.

Jack might not be powerful during the summer, but he was _Jamie's_ guardian spirit. Which meant there were certain things he could do regardless of season.

Cool crept into the injury. Behind Jamie, he knew, Jack glittered and glowed like moonlight on fresh-fallen snow. To Jamie's eyes, the room reflected that light. Gradually, the pain eased.

Then Jack cut off with a cough, stumbling back, gasping for breath.

"Jack!" Jamie was by his side in an instant, helping support the deathly pale teenager.

Jack eased down onto the sill, eyes closed, face contorted. Jamie's shoulder still twinged; he mentally told it to go take a hike, more concerned for his guardian than for the injury. "Jack, are you okay?"

Eyes still closed, Jack nodded. He took a few deep breaths, then clearly forced himself straight. "Nasty magic," he said, voice still breathy, with a nod at Jamie's shoulder. "That'll take a few more sessions to clean out of you. Gimme a couple days."

"Take as long as you need," Jamie told him. "You saved my life today."

Jack's smile was wan. "Yeah, well, you save my sanity. Consider us even."

"Hardly." Jamie glanced at his friend, who now looked sickly under his usual winter pallor, and sighed, taking a seat next to Jack. "I hate summer. There's always more monsters out there when it's warm."

"Not really," Jack rebutted. "But during the rest of the year, I'm strong enough that a lot of them think twice."

"More monsters coming after me, then," Jamie amended. He looked at Jack, who had taken more than a few spirit-wounds of his own over the past couple years. His mouth wrinkled. "After us."

Jack was silent, then dredged a wan smile up. "We do pretty good, though."

Jamie laughed and directed a soft punch at Jack's shoulder. Jack's smile grew as he dodged away.

"Yeah," said Jamie. "We do."


End file.
